Yes, that’s Atlanta this morning. As of 8am today some people were still on the roads. My facebook feed is still full of abandoned people all around 285 that can’t get home. My facebook feed is also full of people looking for their friends and family and some folks wondering how to get home when their car had to be abandoned.
In the decades I’ve lived in GA it has never ever been this bad. My dad was trying to come home from work early to avoid the snow. He was stuck out there so long, he eventually had to make a couple of fairly dangerous maneuvers to get to my cousin’s house and stayed there. Usually, once it starts snowing, people leave work early and make it home. The odd man on the streets at night gets caught in the ice but usually it doesn’t impact the city this much. This time everything from tractor trailers to school buses and everyone trying to get home got caught in the speedily iced roads. Because we have such high traffic roads, the salt and sand that did get put down was only effective for a couple hours and the trucks were not able to make a second or third pass on the roads because traffic got so bad so fast. We just didn’t have enough preparation and prevention, from either the goverment, or as individual citizens.
We know that next winter, and even for the rest of this one, Jeremy and I will have blankets, water, and some dry food in the trunks of our cars just in case we do get stuck. Even chains for our wheels. I have my doubts about how well prepared we will be next time as a city. I certainly didn’t expect as much snow as we got, or the rate of ice just based on the weather forecast for the day.
So far no deaths have been reported, and I am glad for at least that small miracle for our city.
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